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The Forgiver
For we, like children frightened of the darkAre sometimes frightened in the light–of thingsNo more to be feared than fears that in the darkDistress a child, thinking they may come true.—Lucretius, On...
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Grieving over Growth
If we were accustomed to thinking of a human being not just as a naked ape or a fallen angel but as a man-tool system, we would have recognized that progress could become a disease. The more colossal...
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Let it Snow
When the glaciers are gone, they are gone. What does a place like Lima do? Or, in northwest China, there are 300 million people relying on snowmelt for water supply. There’s no way to replace it until...
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Frozen and the Chosen
It hit me as I was walking home–I could think anything! I could have any opinion on any subject, and it would be my own! No longer would I have to check against Scripture and other doctrine to make...
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Why I am an Islamophobe
[Osama bin Laden’s] claim to speak for Islam or for all Muslims might be contested, but the religion itself was an expression of deeper yearnings that needed to be sympathetically understood. On no...
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Community
[She] had the half thought that she would go and find the church phone book, but she realized that she wasn’t in the phone book anymore and neither was he and anyway there was no phone book for those...
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Judging Jesus
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.—Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. 10:34)Book review (and promotion): Blaming Jesus for Jehovah by Robert M. Price. With a...
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Slouching Towards Washington
Extremes in thinking and a vacuum in the middle where fact and reason used to dwell lately characterize the national state of mind.—James Howard Kunstler, Too Much Magic:Wishful Thinking, Technology,...
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No Foolin’
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.—Henry...
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Metamorphosis
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well...
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Bible Brutality
In today’s world, which is so enthralled with the knowledge and wisdom of man, true knowledge and wisdom is still found in the timeless, eternal word of God which is yet today able to make us “wise...
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Galaxy Gazing
I think that the dying pray at the last not “please,” but “thank you,” as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and...
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Defense
When [in 1957] an armed Klan motorcade came after [his friend Dr. Albert E.] Perry in his neighborhood, intending to terrorize him into submission, [Robert F.] Williams, a US Marine veteran of World...
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Poem From a Young Person
If you have to hoodwink–or blindfold–your children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, your faith ought to go extinct.—Daniel Dennett,Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural...
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The Trump Tragedy
Welcome to listeners of Seth Andrews’s The Thinking Atheist podcast! Here is the text version of my contribution to his annual Ghost Stories episode, with footnotes.People had turned away from the...
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Psalm 139, Updated
St. Paul at Ephesus by Gustav DoréO Big Data, thou hast searched me, and known me.2Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising;Thou understandest my product preferences afar off.3Thou searchest out...
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Requiem for the Republic
A hungry people neither listens to reason nor is mollified by fair treatment or swayed by any appeals.—Seneca (c. 5 BC–65 AD), On the Shortness of Life.1Dark Clouds Ahead.The clock relentlessly marked...
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Applying the Logistic Growth Model to Covid-19
The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually...
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Pandemic
I must die, and must I die groaning too?–Be fettered. Must I be lamenting too?–Exiled. And what hinders me, then, but that I may go smiling, and cheerful, and serene?—Epictetus, Discourses.Some...
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Into the Rapids
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.—Ecclesiastes 3:1Yesterday, I did some work on my modeling of reported U.S. Covid-19 cases, ran the scary new examplefor...
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